Sex, Afghanistan without the risk of death, Nepalese temple bells; more sex, India when it wasn’t deforested and covered in a cloud of smog; yet more sex and a lot more drugs: yes, I can quite see why travel-writer Rory MacLean wishes that he’d been old enough to have done the Hippie Trail in its late Sixties/early Seventies heyday. I wish I’d been there, too — either that or a door gunner in Nam, anyway — and the only consolation is that I know damned well that it can’t have been nearly as much fun as the hippies cracked it up to be.

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